Although numerous corporations, scientists, institutions, and organizations desperately want to create utilitarian robots and AI, there is no consensus as to how to do this. This has lead AI pioneer Marvin Minsky to proclaim that the field of artificial intelligence is “brain dead”. Although other AI researchers have refrained from such scathing criticism, some researchers are once again emphasizing “common sense” approaches to AI. The aim of this research is to impart as much general knowledge as possible into a computer system. This is in marked contrast to most “expert systems,” which strive instead to master a very narrow domain. The best known endeavor to imbue systems with common sense is Doug Lenat's Cyc project. The Cyc program has had humans painstakingly submit basic assertions into a large and growing database in an attempt to acheive a machine-version of “common sense.” Of course, there are researchers, such as Hans Moravec, who claim that insufficient processing power is the primary limiter of general AI systems. Moravec argues that:

After decades at about one MIPS (million instructions (or calculations) per second), computer power available to research robots shot through 10, 100 and now 1,000 MIPS starting about 1990 (Figure 1). This deserves explanation because the cost-effectiveness of computing rose steadily all those decades (Figure 2). In 1960 computers were a new and mysterious factor in the cold war, and even outlandish possibilities like Artificial Intelligence warranted significant investment. In the early 1960s AI programs ran on the era's supercomputers, similar to those used for physical simulations by weapons physicists and meteorologists. By the 1970s the promise of AI had faded, and the effort limped for a decade on old hardware. In contrast, weapons labs upgraded repeatedly to new supercomputers. In the 1980s, departmental computers gave way to smaller project computers then to individual workstations and personal computers. Prices fell at each transition, but power per machine stayed about the same. Only after 1990 did prices stabilize and power grow.

Perhaps we should heed Ray Kurzweil's cautionary statement that “Common sense sounds like one simple skill, but actually it requires the full range and depth of human intelligence.”

USER COMMENTS 13 comment(s)

Buh.(5:27pm EST Wed May 28 2003)Meh. - by Ku.

What's the “common sense” of AI nowadays…(5:28pm EST Wed May 28 2003)- Forgive whatever romantisms of Computer Science- Make sure the Artificial Intelligence project is working inside of some big company- Track multi-zero dollars and investiments into the Artificial Intelligence projects' company's- It doesn't matter if the Artificial Intelligence project is actually “dumb”, in case all of the above was realized - by Askheart

Common sense for humans(5:53pm EST Wed May 28 2003)If they get a good common sense algorithm I know several human users who would benefit from having it installed -) - by d0geek

some problems(6:21pm EST Wed May 28 2003)I find that current AI software separates answering questions and learning too much. There should be an awareness loop that wakes up, learns everything that is around it, asks questions about what is what and then can it answer questions, but it should be one i/o. Asking it a question should also teach it something.

I guess that's what common sense is, the awaraness of your own surroundings which is the data that you receive from you senses(including previous knowledge about what you see/hear/etc…).

anyways imo it's too easy to shoot down any theory on how it should work, even a perfect theory. - by whatever

More than semantics(7:56pm EST Wed May 28 2003)The only thing that makes common sense common is the biological brained creatures the term relates to. Unless you want to model your AI after a biological model, common sense does not apply. Rules based relational databases are parse sense, not common sense.

These script and rule based AIs are fine for many applications and it is really great what they are capable of. They make some neat interactive devices but they are not capable of common sense, just parsing a database to make a guess based on some hard coded rules.

An intelligent AI doesn't need to understand and interact with the world like we do, why should we fill them with nonsense relating to our common sense? It is silly to impose our biological limitations to a new form of intelligence. If a system is truly intelligent, let it adapt new rules to make sense of its world using whatever peculiar system of logic it might have. Adapt or die, that is what makes common sense common. The billions of fossilized evolutionary flops show how common it truly is.

I agree with Minsky(9:59pm EST Wed May 28 2003)Those argueing capacity are looking for a crutch.

I will grant that capacity needs to exist to make it work in the real world, but you don't even need a machine to write code. You can write code on notebook paper like some old school hackers did before they got their computer time. Issac Newton could have probably read the source code to Doom or Quake and made sense of it without having a machine to run it on. He would see the graphics equations and recognize the were derived from his “Principia Optica” work.

AI is nowhere near that.

Every AI Professor proclaiming that capacity is the issue should resign because they have forgotten that they are still in a theoretical field that can work through problems before hardware is developed.

Barring radically new hardware which is not a cpacity issue it will all be compiled to assymbly language or JIT code.

Assiciations, associations, associations..(12:17pm EST Thu May 29 2003)…that is all Cyc will ever be able to make. Making associations is what dogs and idiots do, not rational entities.- by Tech Sector Watcher